Board of Directors

Dear Nonviolent Communication and Freedom Project Community Members, Freedom Project seeks to expand our Board of Directors and invites you to apply.

Freedom Project is an innovative Nonviolent Communication educational and teaching organization serving prison inmates, those recently released back to the community after incarceration, and community members interested in learning how to create more peaceful and safer communities. As we teach prisoners how to live peacefully and avoid conflict, we also serve their families, and the communities they will live in. Every time a person conditioned to violence responds to conflict in a more peaceful way, the impact of the work of Freedom Project is realized in someone not experiencing the trauma of violence, and in someone not returning to prison.

At present, Freedom Project serves prisoners in four Washington State prisons (3 prisons at Monroe Correctional Complex and the Washington Corrections Center for Women), former offenders (returnees), and those in the community who wish to either volunteer within our programs, or to teach Nonviolent Communication in their communities in the Puget Sound region. Presently, approximately one-half of those served by Freedom Project were either sentenced in or released to communities in the greater King County area; the rest are released to other communities in Washington State. The crimes committed by those we serve range from repeated petty theft and drug crimes, to the crimes considered by many the most heinous: sexual crimes against children.

Using well-trained volunteers and a proven violence prevention communication technique, we teach prisoners, returnees, and community members how better to understand each other’s basic human needs and how better to communicate not only in times of crisis and conflict, but in everyday relationships with family, friends, and those in their communities.

As a member of the Freedom Project Board of Directors, we would ask that you:

• Have an active commitment to Freedom Project and offer specific talent, time, or treasure to the organization
• Be willing to commit a minimum of 10 hours a month (including a 3-hour Board of Directors meeting the 4th Thursday of each month and to accept other tasks, as needed)
• Actively engage in fundraising for the organization: this may include contributing yourself, encouraging friends to attend Freedom Project events and to contribute financially to the organization, or to accept committee positions that encourage active engagement in Freedom Project
• Conduct yourself as best you can in alignment with NVC principles of awareness and connectedness
• Be willing to accept and implement additional training in board governance responsibilities, and in the skills of Nonviolent Communication
• Actively engage in events presented by Freedom Project
• Have passion for Freedom Project's vision and mission, and be willing to devote your skills and passion to help realize them

If you have a willingness to contribute and are enthusiastic about Nonviolent Communication, please consider nominating yourself to the board.

 Sincerely,

Fran Howard,

Board President

 nvc@freedom-project.org